Page 122 of The Grief We Hold

“The Bratva. The Zakharovs.”

Atom sucks in air between his teeth and tongue. “Fuck.”

I’m still reeling. Unlike the Mafia, which tends to spread power among the five famiglias and their cutthroat version of respect, the Bratva is run by one unyielding family.

The Zakharovs.

Rurik Zakharov is their leader. But he has seven sons who have all infiltrated senior positions.

If Marco pissed those guys off, it’s a wonder Raven escaped.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“It’s high-risk investment. They loved when it was hitting high, but then the markets tanked. I told them it would rebound. But they want their money back. I brought in other clients, was trying to use that money to pay them back, but…”

“You started a fucking Ponzi scheme, you low-life piece of shit,” Smoke says.

Marco looks up with pleading eyes. “I can fix it, if I get some capital to work with. But they wanted all their cash, and I don’t have it. Can’t liquidate everything I have fast enough.”

I huff. “Don’t look at me like I’m giving it to you. How much do you owe them?”

“Seventeen million.”

“Fuck,” Grudge says. “We don’t need to kill him. The Zakharovs will find him, no matter where he runs.”

If it had been a hundred thousand, I might have pulled the cash together and paid the Bratva directly to get them off Raven’s back. But seventeen million…

No one has that kind of money kicking around.

And even if I did, I still wouldn’t hand it to the Bratva to get this sniveling heap of shit out of trouble.

Then I smell it. The piss stains his trousers.

“Fuck’s sake,” Butcher says. “Some men are literally a walking cum-stain.”

“What do you want to do with him?” Atom asks.

“One day, Fen’s gonna ask me what happened to his dad. Don’t want the answer to be that I gutted him in the back alley while Fen was in the apartment upstairs.”

Smoke slaps my shoulder. “Wise move. Want me to do it for you?”

“No,” Marco says. “Please. No. I’ll leave.”

“Why did you even come here in the first place? How did you know Raven was here?”

Marco looks down at the ground. “A friend who does contract work tracing phones for the cops. I just wanted to drive her back to Seattle.”

“And then what?”

Marco shakes his head, so I slap him hard to get his attention.

“Fuck,” he shouts. “Okay. I was going to tell her to go into the house and get what I needed while I…”

I’ve got the picture. “You were going to keep Fen with you to make her do it, weren’t you?”

Marco snaps. “Fen’s too much of a pussy to do it on his own, so of course I’d ask her to do it.”

My fist is in his stomach before I even realize. “Fen’s not a pussy, he’s a fucking five-year-old kid who deserves to be protected and loved, not abandoned and used, you fuck.”

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